Buffett name going on new Omaha cancer center

The Buffett name is going on a cancer center being built in Omaha, thanks to a relative of billionaire Warren Buffett, officials said Friday.

The Nebraska Medical Center and the University of Nebraska Medical Center said the exact amount of the donation won't be disclosed, but UNMC Chancellor Harold Maurer said "we could not be more grateful to Pamela Buffett for her monumental gift."

The center will be called the Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center, owing to a donation to the University of Nebraska Foundation by Pamela Buffett. She is the widow of Warren Buffett's first cousin Fred "Fritz" Buffett. He died in 1997 after fighting kidney cancer.

Pamela Buffett had met her future husband in the 1950s Omaha when she baby-sat for Warren and his wife at the time, Susan.

Pamela Buffett has since remarried and now lives in Beverly Hills, Calif., with her husband, Dusty Fleming, who originally is from Omaha.

University and hospital officials said the cancer center will include 98 research labs, an outpatient center and a hospital with up to 108 beds. The center portion of the project will cost $323 million, officials said. About $47 million more will be spent on a non-cancer outpatient facility.

The project is seen as a medical and financial boon to the community. Officials estimate it will provide 4,657 new jobs to the area and add $537 million annually to the area economy.

But financing for the project has caused some hands to rise in objection.

Gov. Dave Heineman said last year that while he favored the state providing $50 million for the center, he didn't think it was fair for Omaha to raise cigarette taxes to provide $35 million for it. The governor and others said the state's $50 million came from taxes, so the cigarette tax amounted to unfair double taxation.

The city imposes a 3 percent tax on the cigarettes and other tobacco products sold within the city.

A project groundbreaking is scheduled for Tuesday, and construction is expected to be finished in 2016.

The project requires the razing of Swanson Hall at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, a medical school that sits about 2 1/2 miles west of downtown Omaha. The Nebraska Medical Center is the university's hospital partner.